Suppose you want to buy something that costs a quarter, and what you have is 3 dimes. If there isnt a 5 cent coin, this creates a situation where you have enough money, but making exact change isnt possible, which while not impossible to deal with is bothersome. If we moved to only dimes and no quarters or nickels, it would never make sense to make a price end in 5 cents, so any price would be a multiple of 10 cents and change can always be made. Alternatively, if you get rid of dimes and nickels but keep quarters, then it doesnt make sense to charge a price ending in something other than .00, .25, .50, or .75, and so you can always make change for those prices with the coins one would have.
Literally none of this matters anyways if pennies are going, because making prices end in certain amounts won’t work as nice in practice as it does here for the simple reason that US prices almost never include taxes.
I mean, presumably fractions of a dollar still exist as a concept even if the coins don’t, so if you’re selling something that someone might buy in cash, one could just set the sticker price so that the final price plus tax ends up as a round number, essentially including tax when deciding on price and then taking it out again when making the labels, if one wanted to do that.
Suppose you want to buy something that costs a quarter, and what you have is 3 dimes. If there isnt a 5 cent coin, this creates a situation where you have enough money, but making exact change isnt possible, which while not impossible to deal with is bothersome. If we moved to only dimes and no quarters or nickels, it would never make sense to make a price end in 5 cents, so any price would be a multiple of 10 cents and change can always be made. Alternatively, if you get rid of dimes and nickels but keep quarters, then it doesnt make sense to charge a price ending in something other than .00, .25, .50, or .75, and so you can always make change for those prices with the coins one would have.
Literally none of this matters anyways if pennies are going, because making prices end in certain amounts won’t work as nice in practice as it does here for the simple reason that US prices almost never include taxes.
I mean, presumably fractions of a dollar still exist as a concept even if the coins don’t, so if you’re selling something that someone might buy in cash, one could just set the sticker price so that the final price plus tax ends up as a round number, essentially including tax when deciding on price and then taking it out again when making the labels, if one wanted to do that.